Author
Dr Jose Duke Bagulaya
Organisation/Institution
Education University of Hong Kong
Country
HONG KONG (SAR OF CHINA)
Panel
Legal Education
Title
When doctrinal study is not enough: Interdisciplinary legal studies in the age of AI in Southeast Asia
Abstract
In Southeast Asia’s law schools, legal pedagogy still means the memorization of legal provisions, the familiarization with case law, and knowledge of legal doctrine. The coming of AI may have a slow but inevitable impact on legal pedagogy in the university. There is a growing literature on the changes that AI is bringing into the profession such as faster review of documents, complex legal research and easier drafting. Moreover, large law firms are beginning to form multidisciplinary groups which demand the combination of technical and editorial knowledge. In this new era, the training of doctrine will no longer be enough. In this context, I argue that law schools need to develop interdisciplinary legal education which allows law students to further hone their undergraduate or graduate skills while learning law. One of the emerging fields in recent times is what is now called “Law &…”, which connects law to disciplines such as film, literature, economics, philosophy, history, political science and computer science. The importance of interdisciplinarity, understood here as a co-operation, is that it prepares students to work within multidisciplinary groups in law firms and government. Moreover, the introduction of interdisciplinary legal studies does not only mean the creation of new courses. Interdisciplinarity may also be a pedagogical method. Thus, traditional subjects such as constitutional or international law may be taught through, for instance, both film and legal text. In the Philippine context, one may choose Lino Brocka’s film Orapronobis to discuss the 1987 Constitution or Human Rights Law. Colonial legal history in Southeast Asia may also be taught through novels such as Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind. Through these artistic works, Southeast Asians and Asians in general, may learn about their shared but differentiated experiences of colonial law, thus binding them together as a group with common history.
Biography
Jose Duke Bagulaya is a Filipino lawyer and a lecturer at the Education University of Hong Kong. He holds an MA in Comparative Literature (UP Diliman), JD (UST) and PhD (HKU Law). He is author of four books such as Writing Literary History, Woven Words: Poems, ASEAN as an International Organization and Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: Philippine Constitutional Law, International Law and the Humanities. He was assistant professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where he taught interdisciplinary courses for a decade before moving to Hong Kong. He also served as a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies, EduHK. As a legal practitioner, he joined cause-oriented litigation in Manila, such as land reform and labour cases. He was part of the litigation of the leading Martial Law cases of 2017 (Lagman v Medialdea, Philippine Supreme Court). Dr Bagulaya's legal works have appeared in leading journals such as Leiden Journal of International Law, London Review of International Law, International Criminal Law Review, Asian Journal of International Law, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Kritika Kultura, and Law and Literature. He has served as a peer reviewer for European Journal of Cultural Studies and European Journal of International Law.
